Guest Post: Five Ways to Find Time to Read

Victoria was kind enough to fill in for me for a day while I'm out. If you like what you read here, you should totally check out her blog, The Endless Oceans of my Mind, where she talks about books, Marvel, and living in Australia and Canada. 

Five ways to find time to read in your busy life

Finding time to read can be a little difficult sometimes. After all, we can get so caught up with defeating evil queens, slaying and/or befriending dragons or, you know, doing homework and stuff that we often find our To Be Read piles brushing the ceiling. But fear not! Here are five ways you can find time to read in your crazy lives. 

1) While you eat breakfast. This one can be a little difficult if you eat while running out the door, but if you sit down for even five minutes to eat you can find yourself with an extra five minutes to read. That's an extra page or two every morning! 

2) While you're on the run from psycho assassins/police. I understand, you've either been framed for a crime you didn't commit or your past has finally caught up with you. (We've all been there.) Life on the run can get a little hectic, but if you bring along a book to read, you can read while you hide underneath the bridge as you wait for the psycho assassins/police to leave.

3) While you commute. If you have to work ten or more minutes away from your house, it's a great chance to read something. Bring a book along on the bus, and if you're driving then bring an audiobook and play it over your speakers. (Please don't try to read and drive at the same time. I beg you.)

4) While slaying dragons. Obviously, please do not attempt to slay the dragon and read at the exact same time, because that, my friend, will end with you getting barbecued. However, slaying a dragon always seems to involve traveling long distances with a band of misfits and telling stories by the fire underneath the stars. Being a bookworm, I give you full permission to ignore said band of misfits and read by the fire instead of listening to their boring stories you've heard a million times. (You're welcome.)

5) During lunch breaks. I understand that eating and reading don't always mix (and I have ketchup stains on my books to prove it), but it's worth a shot. Like I've said before, ignore all the other people in your life and just read something, darn it! Hide in your school library or storage closet if you have to.

How do you find time to read? 

Guest Post: To the Books Which Are Forgotten

Thank you to the lovely Victoria Jackson, who greatly reduced my stress level today by doing a guest post for me. She writes at The Endless Oceans of my Mind about movies, books, and her life in Canada and Australia. (In other words, you should totally check it out if you haven't already. After you read this post, of course).

 I'll be returning with a Friday Fiction Fix later this week. Hopefully I'll have caught up with some sleep by then. 

***

I read this book the other day called Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. This girl named Liz is killed by a taxi and wakes up on a cruise ship, the SS Nile. When they arrive on shore, she discovers she's at this place called Elsewhere, the afterlife where you arrive by the cruise ship, get a job, meet other people who've died and make new friends. You age backwards from the day you die, and when you're a week old you're sent back to earth to be reborn.

Source

I've never seen it mentioned anywhere on the blogosphere (but that could have been because it was published in 2005. Apparently it was critically acclaimed, but I've still never heard of it). I've never read a review on it, I've never had it recommended to me, I've never met another person who's read it. (The only reason I read it was because it was culled from my library and I found it in a "Free Books" pile, sandwiched between a health food book from the last century and another book on teenage mental health from five million years ago. Only one person had taken it out from the library, judging from the stamp in the back.) 

And I really liked it. It was interesting and a quick read and it made me feel good. It was sad and beautiful and it meant something, and it made me happy. The characters were great and it was such a beautiful twist on life. But it's been forgotten. 

That made me wonder about all of those good books which have been forgotten. There are so many more books out there than can possibly be read, and we can never remember them all. There are so many good books that authors have poured their hearts and souls into, and they've been burned for politics or dropped in the cull pile because no one borrowed them from the library or didn't get enough hype so they fizzled out and died. There are good books which have been lost because other books were better or because their covers weren't very good, or because a thousand years ago the scroll fell off the wagon and landed in the river or have accidentally been put on the bottom shelf and collected dust for too many years. 

So here's to you. Here's to the books which have been forgotten. 

Have you read any forgotten books? If you could chose one book to bring back into the limelight, which one would it be? 

Guest Post: Victoria Jackson

Hey, everyone! I'm off on a little adventure of my own today, so give a nice, warm welcome to Victoria Jackson from The Endless Oceans of my Mind.  She blogs about reading, writing, movies, and her two home countries, Canada and Australia. (In other words, she's totally awesome, so go check out her blog). 

Sharing your work

Sharing your work takes a lot of bravery. When you give your words to someone, you are pretty much literally giving them your hopes, your aspirations, the thing you dream about at night. I believe that every piece of writing someone does (or art, or design, or math equation, or whatever) has a piece of themselves in it. Giving that to someone puts you in a raw, vulnerable position and that's scary. That's terrifying, actually, especially if you give it to someone to critique because even though we always say that it's not personal, it really is. This is your child you are giving to someone, hoping they will tell you how you've raised them wrong. 

That takes courage. 

It's also a very beautiful thing, though. As writers, we recognise our words are powerful. We all know the power of propaganda or a movie or a novel. Words can lift someone up or tear them down, it all depends on how you use them. 

I always find it beautiful when someone shares their work with someone else, though. That writer is finding their courage and saying, you know what? My words are powerful on their own, and it's terrifying to give them to someone else. What if they don't like it? What if they don't understand it? But my words are so much more powerful in our hands as opposed to just mine. 

Isn't that just beautiful?

Ok, I usually avoid editing my pictures but I liked this one too much to not post it. So in other words, this is not actually what the beach looks like (but I like it anyways, so... :) )

Well, that was deeper than usual. Does it scare you to give your writing to someone else?